Approaches to the Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1914)

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• specific issues raised about gender, race, class, science, empire, capitalism, material culture and print culture across literary and historical disciplines;
• what is common and what is specific to the approach of different disciplines to the study of culture in the nineteenth century;
• current key debates in nineteenth-century studies;
• how questions of aesthetics and taste, the literary marketplace and its cultures of reception, science, class, race, and empire changed across the long nineteenth century;
• how to research and develop an appropriate interdisciplinary topic in the period using archival sources.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• draw upon a range of relevant primary and secondary sources to explore specific historical and literary questions;
• demonstrate the capacity for self-directed problem-solving and independent work within a strict time-frame.
• develop ideas in concert with others in the context of discussion and debate;
• Identify and outline the main debates in a given field;
• communicate a coherent and convincing argument at length in written form;

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• describe and evaluate the state of research and scholarship on culture in cross-disciplinary perspective;
• Identify lines of enquiry about cultural change common to historical and literary disciplines;
• apply appropriate critical and historical approaches to diverse cultural forms;
• identify and develop a topic for further research which might form the basis of an MA dissertation.

Cognitive Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• critically evaluate both primary source materials and arguments in secondary texts;
• identify and analyse the shifting historical frameworks through which culture is understood across the period;
• conceptualize historical and cultural issues in new ways as a result of interdisciplinary work.
• synthesize and integrate the analysis of primary sources and secondary texts in a coherent written argument;

This is the core module for the MA English Literary Studies (Nineteenth-Century) pathway, taught by all those contributing to the MA in a given year, and will introduce you to the key critical, theoretical, historiographical and conceptual debates surrounding the study of the long nineteenth century.

It will emphasise the issues which have been central to the emergence and revision of key areas of scholarship on the period over the last quarter century, and to effective methods for archival research.. The module looks at how nineteenth-century print culture responded to major social, technological, theological, scientific, and political transformations. Indicative topics through which these will be addressed include: the emotions; the body; the literary marketplace; cultures of reading; the environment and the sea; the rise of the British empire; sexuality; literary scandal and public morality; cultural production, authorship and literary celebrity; science, religion and discourses of race. These topics are studied mainly in Britain, but with some comparative dimension to their treatment in Europe and America.

The module will use primary materials from the period, i.e. literary texts, periodical literature, legal documents, fine art and popular visual images, artefacts etc. in relation to a wide range of secondary critical and historical texts drawn from literary criticism and its history, social history, the history of art, the law, and political economy. The module examines how far separate disciplines have been involved in a common debate about cultural change, and how far they have developed specialised accounts of such change.

The module will explicitly raise questions about the problems and possibilities of interdisciplinarity in Literature, History and the History of Art and Material Culture, and the conceptual and methodological issues involved in interdisciplinary study.

An introductory session on the historiography of the period will be followed by sessions on topics such as Cultures of Authorship and Reception; Embodiment and Character; Emotions; Gender/Class/Ethnicity; Print Culture. In the two final weeks of the course we will synthesize and review the work covered.

Teaching methods may include:

• seminars involving both tutor and student led discussion;
• use of internet and other electronic resources on the long nineteenth century.

Learning activities include

• Participation in general discussion of themes drawn from weekly reading;
• oral seminar presentation;
• Independent reading and research;
• Development of archival skills;
• Development of techniques and conventions of visual analysis.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Individual Presentation

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: Students receive oral feedback on their presentation, both from peers and staff in class and they can also have further oral feedback by appointment. The comments received on the presentation will help students with their commentaries.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.